Earlier this year, Smithsonian-Folkways released 14 CDs originally recorded
by Richard Dyer-Bennet (1913-1991) for his own label, Dyer-Bennet Records,
between 1955 and 1965. To order Richard Dyer-Bennet CDs from Smithsonian-Folkways,
click here. These reissues will no doubt be well received by those already
familiar with the so-called “twentieth-century minstrel.” My intention,
however, is to acquaint a new generation of folk music fans with Dyer-Bennet’s
life and body of work.

To understand Dyer-Bennet’s work one must first appreciate his admiration
of Sven Scholander (1860-1936), the famed Swedish singer. In 1935, Dyer-Bennet
traveled by boat and bicycle to Stockholm in order to meet Scholander.
Though initially reluctant, Scholander, then 75 and long retired, granted
the young man’s wish and sang a number of songs from his huge repertoire.
Dyer-Bennet was immediately enchanted. "Somehow," he would recall
later, "it was the greatest musical experience I ever had." (1)

The old master's style of singing was something Dyer-Bennet "had
never dreamed of. He looked straight at me and spun tale after tale as
though singing out of his own life. A pageant of the ages seemed to pass
before my eyes, and it was all evoked by the husky voice of this old man
and by his simple but exactly appropriate accompaniments on the lute."
(2)

During the two months he remained in Stockholm, Dyer-Bennet saw Scholander
a half dozen more times. From him the young singer learned nearly a hundred
songs, many of which became staples in his own repertoire. But perhaps
more important than the songs themselves was the feeling for folk music
Dyer-Bennet absorbed in Scholander's presence. Years later he told Nat
Hentoff that his credo remained that of Scholander: "The value lies
inherent in the song, not in the regional mannerisms or colloquialisms."
(3)

Richard Dyer-Bennet's road to Stockholm and Scholander began in Leicester,
England, where he was born October 6, 1913. His father, Richard Stewart
Dyer-Bennet, was an officer in the British army. Mrs. Dyer-Bennet, born
Miriam Wolcott Clapp in Illinois, was reared in California. Both enjoyed
music and often played the records of Caruso and John McCormack.

The family moved to Canada in 1919, and then to California in 1925 after
Dyer-Bennet’s father had separated from his mother. Young Richard accompanied
his mother to Germany in 1929 and returned home to study literature at
Berkeley in 1932. The following year at a Christmas party, Dyer-Bennet
was asked to sing a few songs. Afterwards, Gertrude Wheeler Beckman introduced
herself to Dyer-Bennet and suggested he make a career of what up till then
had been merely a hobby. Beckman offered to train his voice, for she saw
in the young student a possible successor to Scholander, whose work she
had long admired.

Inspired by his teacher, and fortunate enough to have received a $500
legacy from a relative whom he had never met, Dyer-Bennet set off for Sweden
and his memorable encounter with Scholander. On his way home to America,
Dyer-Bennet practiced his art first in Sweden, then in his native England,
and finally in Wales. During this time, he sang for assembled union members,
parishioners, and even grocery store customers. It must have been particularly
satisfying to the young man that his audiences were mainly composed of
working folk, English mill workers and Welsh coal miners. Scholander had
told him that "the only way to learn the art of minstrelsy is to sing
to the people, feel their response, and make them believe in what you are
singing." (4)

Back home in Berkeley, Dyer-Bennet dropped out of school--"because
now I could read Goethe for myself, you know" (5)--but continued to
study with Gertrude Beckman. Together they worked on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Italian songs, as well as pieces by Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann,
Franz, Brahms, and Wolf.

"All this was good for my voice and general musical awareness.
It also filled my mind with ideas for accompaniments, though I had not
found a classic-guitar teacher and was involved in a painstaking attempt
to master the instrument by trial and error." (6)

In 1941 Dyer-Bennet moved to New York and quickly became part of the
great folk music revival underway there. He found work singing first at
Le Ruban Bleu, a night club run by Herbert Jacoby, and then at the famed
Village Vanguard in Manhattan, where he honed his art and became a thorough
professional. Dyer-Bennet's appearances on stage at the Vanguard happily
surprised its clientele. More accustomed to hearing the latest jazz acts,
the audience gradually came to embrace the folk material of Burl Ives.
Yet they hardly knew how to react when Dyer-Bennet appeared on stage in
full evening dress and began to sing ballads that were centuries old.

Two regular Vanguard fans of Dyer-Bennet were Mike Quill and Ted Zittel.
Quill was involved in the Transport Worker's Union, and Zittel was his
publicity man. Zittel arranged for Dyer-Bennet to sing for the union at
Madison Square Garden, and then helped to arrange his first
recitals at
New York's Town Hall in 1944. Later that same year Dyer-Bennet sang at
Carnegie Hall. Audience and critic alike responded warmly to Dyer-Bennet’s
bel canto versions of American and European folk songs.

Sol Hurok (1888-1974), the best-known impresario of the day, offered
to represent Dyer-Bennet after hearing him perform. Dyer-Bennet recalled
that "after the first group of songs, Hurok came backstage and offered
to undertake my management. He said, 'I've heard this sort of thing once
before; in Riga, in about 1920, I heard a Swedish singer . . .'" (7)
The singer, of course, was Scholander, but Hurok could not believe that
anyone as young as Dyer-Bennet could have heard the minstrel perform. Dyer-Bennet
recounted his trip to Stockholm for Hurok, who was duly impressed by the
singer's determination and obvious love for his work. "Two days later
I signed a contract with Hurok, and my professional future was in the best
of hands." (8)

The years following the war were busy ones for Dyer-Bennet. He gave
more than 50 concerts a year and recorded nearly 140 songs for a number
of labels, including Stinson, Keynote, Continental, Mercury, Concert Hall,
Decca, Vox, and Remington. An attempt to found a school of minstrelsy in
Aspen failed, however, and then, in the fifties, Dyer-Bennet, along with
Pete Seeger, Oscar Brand, and many others, was listed in Red Channels,
a book published to expose those linked in various ways to the Communist
Party. Thus besmirched, the twentieth-century minstrel found himself the
object of right-wing protests. Bookings began to dry up, and Dyer-Bennet
decided to concentrate on his recording career.

Recording his repertoire was vital to Dyer-Bennet. Speaking in 1963
to Nat Hentoff, Dyer-Bennet remarked,

"so far my repertoire includes five to six hundred songs. I don't
want to leave it only in books, where the music cannot live. I wish, for
instance, there had been Scholander recordings to study. I may well not
be the most skillful possible representative of my way of singing, but
these albums will indicate what a minstrel could do in the twentieth century."
(9)

With the help of Harvey Cort, his partner/producer, and J. Gordon Holt,
a recording engineer, the minstrel founded Dyer-Bennet Records. In one
part of the Great Barrington, Massachusetts home to which he and his family
had moved in the early 1950's, Dyer-Bennet set up a control room and recording
studio. From 1955 to 1965 he would record at least one album annually in
domestic comfort.

Over half of Dyer-Bennet’s recorded songs date from the 19th century,
a quarter from the 18th and 17th, and the remainder from earlier times.
More than half originated in the United Kingdom, a third in the singer's
adopted homeland of America, and the rest in western Europe. Dyer-Bennet
learned these songs from a vast number of people and sources. Many came
from Scholander, of course, but other sources were fellow singers Burl
Ives, John Jacob Niles, Leadbelly, Tom Glazer, and John McCormack. Still
others were found in folk song collections such as Carl Sandburg's American
Songbag, or Thomas Percy's famous 18th century work, Reliques of English
Poetry. On the fourteen albums recorded for his own label, Dyer-Bennet
also set to music the poetry of Yeats, Byron, Charles Kingsley, Bret Harte,
Robert Burns, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and Goethe, as well as compositions
by sixteenth-century minstrels Thomas Campion and John Dowland.

The seventh album in the series shows an entirely different side of
the man. This album is devoted entirely to Beethoven's Scottish and Irish
songs, originally published in three volumes in 1814, 1816, and 1818. The
Beethoven project was the brainchild of George Thomson, a Scottish folk
song enthusiast. Thomson's idea was to improve the quality of both the
words and the music of a number of traditional songs. In his album notes,
Dyer-Bennet states that "by various use of cajolery, appeals to national
pride, and money, he was able to engage a number of distinguished poets
and musicians in his enterprise. Among these were Scott, Burns, Haydn,
and Beethoven." (10) On the album Dyer-Bennet is joined by a trio
of musicians: Natasha Magg on piano, Urico Rossi on violin, and Fritz Magg
on cello. The sound is thus decidedly unique in the Dyer-Bennet canon.
As he told Studs Terkel later, "it isn't Beethoven, it certainly isn't
folk song anymore, but why does one have to call it anything? They're lovely
songs." (11)

The same adjective is often used to describe the work of Stephen Foster,
another Dyer-Bennet favorite. The eleventh album in the series is a collection
of Foster songs. Dyer-Bennet had a high regard for Foster's talent, which,
had time allowed, "might have resulted in an American Schubert."
(12) By themselves, the songs "have at least the charm and distinction
of small works of art, and sound gracious and pleasant in these noisy times."
(13)

The original idea for an all-Foster album was suggested to Dyer-Bennet
in 1947 by Alfred Frankenstein. Fifteen years passed before Dyer-Bennet
engaged Harry Rubenstein to accompany him on piano for the recording of
the songs. According to Frankenstein, the wait was well worthwhile. In
the past "chauvinistic phonies" have recorded Foster "according
to commercial needs or the whims of the moment." Dyer-Bennet is "the
first person in history to record songs by Stephen Foster precisely as
Foster wrote them, using Josiah Lilly's famous facsimile edition of the
original sheet music." (14) Again Scholander's advice--"the value
lies inherent in the song, not in the regional mannerisms or colloquialisms"--had
served the pupil well. While to some Dyer-Bennet’s scholarly and artistic
approach to folk music seemed somewhat stiff or mannered, he maintained
that “no song is ever harmed by being articulated clearly, on pitch, with
sufficient control of phrase and dynamics to make the most of the poetry
and melody, and with an instrumental accompaniment designed to enrich the
whole effect.” (15)

Among contemporary folk singers, Dyer-Bennet singled out Joan Baez--who
later recorded his arrangement of Byron’s “So We’ll Go No More A-Roving”--as
a talent after his own heart. “She has the loveliest voice. When I first
heard her I thought she had the makings of an extraordinary performer.”
(16)

But, by Dyer-Bennet's definition, Baez, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, and
all the other singers of traditional folk songs were, like Scholander,
minstrels. In a landmark article written for Hi Fi/Stereo Review, Dyer-Bennet
maintains that

"this distinction between folk singing and minstrelsy is more than
a mere semantic quibble. If you are born and raised among rural people
who know the songs, and if you can carry the tunes, and do, you are a folk
singer, like it or not. If you are born and raised in the city, you may
copy the intonation and accent of a true rural folk singer, but you will
be, at best, an imitation of the real thing. What you can become is a minstrel."
(17)

During the last fifteen years of his life, the twentieth-century minstrel
devoted himself to two major projects. In the mid-seventies he performed
and recorded his own translation of Schubert’s “Schoene Muellerin”song
cycle. Then, in 1978, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded
him $100,000 to pursue the enormous task of recording Robert Fitzgerald’s
translation of Homer’s Odyssey.

Although he gave numerous declamations of excerpts from the work, and
recorded some of them for posterity, Dyer-Bennet died of cancer in 1991
before he could complete the work. He was survived by his wife, Melvene,
and his four daughters, Eunice, Ellen, Bonnie, and Brooke. He left behind
an extensive body of recorded work, and an indelible impression on the
thousands who heard him perform on stage.

Writing in 1961, Dyer-Bennet claimed:

"The way to performances that will always ring true is shaped by
the words and music of the songs themselves and has nothing to do with
transient taste or stylistic mannerism. All great singers of songs find
this way for themselves, and the young aspirant will do himself and his
art justice only if he searches until he finds it." (18)

Richard Dyer-Bennet was one such singer. He found songs that had permanence
and introduced them to an entirely new audience. He was inspired by tradition,
but never became its slave. Beckman and Scholander set him on his way,
but the road he traveled was very much his own.

Albums are listed in chronological order by title, followed by recording
date, recording company, album number, and what I've called an appendix
code. This code is an abbreviation I've used in the appendices B and C
to represent the albums below. An alphabetical listing of each album's
songs is also given.

Again, My Lyre, Bonny Laddie, Hieland Laddie, British Light Dragoons,
Could This Ill World Have Been Contrived, Faithfu' Johnie, O Mary, At Thy
Window Be, Oh How Can I Be Blithe and Glad, Oh Sweet Were the Hours, On
the Massacre of Glencoe, Sunset, The Lovely Lass of Inverness

SIX IRISH SONGS. 195?. Concert Hall. Appendix Code: CHIR.

Morning a Cruel Turmoiler Is, Morning Air Plays On My Face, Oh! Who,
My Dear Dermot, Once More I Hail Thee, Pulse of an Irishman, Return to
Ulster

Bold Fenian Men, Bonnie Earl of Morey, Down by the Sally Gardens, Down
in the Valley, Fine Flowers in the Valley, I'm A Poor Boy, Joys of Love,
Lonesome Valley, Molly Brannigan, Oft in the Stilly Night ,Pedro, Phyllis
and Her Mother, Pull Off Your Old Coat, So We'll Go No More A-Roving, Three
Fishers, Vicar of Bray

Bow Down, Buckeye Jim, Come All Ye, Frog Went A-Courtin, Go Tell Aunt
Rhodie, Green Corn, Hole in the Bottom of the Sea, John Peel, Leprechaun,
Little Pigs, Old Bangum, One Morning in May, Piper of Dundee, Tailor and
the Mouse, Three Crows, Three Jolly Rogues of Lynn

Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway!, Beautiful Dreamer, Come Where My Love
Lies Dreaming, Come With Thy Sweet Voice Again, For Thee, Love, For Thee,
Gentle Annie, If You've Only Got a Mustache, Jeanie With the Light Brown
Hair, Linger in Blissful Repose, Open Thy Lattice, Love, Sweetly She Sleeps,
My Alice Fair, There are Plenty of Fish in the Sea

The Tale of the Tales (spoken), The Man Who Was Full of Fun (spoken),
The King of the Noise (spoken), The Wolf Who Was a Friend (spoken), Devil
and the Farmer's Wife ,Fox and the Geese, Old Gray Goose, Soldier and the
Lady

Tailor and the Mouse 6
Tailor's Boy 1601
The Lovely Lass of Inverness
CHC-13; 7
There are Plenty of Fish in the Sea 11
There Was a Friar in Our
Town 1601
Three Crows 6
Three Fishers 1
Three Jolly Rogues of Lynn S364; SLP61; 6
Three Raens
FM-103; SLP35; 4
Three Tailors SLP60;
4
Turkish Reverie VOX; 2
Two Comments 10
Two Maidens Went
Milking One Day SLP2; VAN; 2; 609
Two Sisters of Binnorie CST-2011; REM; 9